Jean-François Mayer
I specialize in comparative politics, use a political ethnography approach and engage in participatory research.
My research focuses on civil society organizations, social movements and work-related policies in Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Mexico. Specifically, my research examines: strategies of individual and collective resistance to chronic violence in informal workplaces; how marginalized people in urban areas organize to claim their social and labor rights; and more generally the consequences of precariousness, informality and chronic violence on the daily lives of marginalized urban populations.
Over the past few years, my fieldwork has taken place in Brazil, and more specifically in the megalopolis of São Paulo, the country's most industrialized, urbanized, populous and wealthy city. In this context, I am engaged in ethnographic and participatory research with informal workers.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Concordia University
In particular, I'm interested in learning about the individual and collective strategies used by domestic workers to resist chronic violence in the workplace. Based on the lived experiences of domestic workers and in collaboration with them, I wish to discover how these strategies can be refined to make this daily resistance more effective and fruitful.
I also have the privilege of working with the extraordinary women of the São Paulo City Domestic Workers' Union (Sindicato das Trabalhadoras Domésticas do Municipio de São Paulo, STDMSP).
Latest publications
Mayer, Jean François. 2024. “Resistance to Oppression in Informal Work Domestic Workers’ Strategies against Workplace Violence in Latin America.” Comparative Sociology 23 (5): 583–614. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691330-bja10119.
Jean Franc?ois Mayer. (2021). Resistance to Chronic Violence in Informal Workplaces: the Strategies of Domestic Workers in Brazil. The Bulletin of Latin American Research, 40(3).
Jean François Mayer. (2021). Guest Editor. “Introduction to: Exploring the Repertoire of Strategies of Resistance to Routinised Violence in Informal Workplaces”. The Bulletin of Latin American Research, 40(3).